SINGING IN THE RAIN

TEARS OF SADNESS
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Many of you know this world famous song from the musical “Singing In The Rain”. This catchy tune gets stuck in your head as visions of Gene Kelly singing and dancing in the rain run through your mind. Though I have chosen to use this tittle for this blog post I will however be talking about something very different than the musical song piece. For me the term ‘singing in the rain’ has a whole different meaning. To me it means that even in the rain (or hard points of our lives) we need to praise God and thank Him for the life He has given us. Singing His praises in the rainy times of our lives is not the first thing we think of doing, in fact it is often the last. Unless we focus on praising Him it can be one of the hardest things to do.

These last 4 months have been an extremely hard time in my life. I’ve felt like I was drowning, to exhausted to keep swimming towards a shore that never seemed to get closer. In the beginning of September my grandma landed in the hospital with back problems. As we were dealing with her new health complications ( which landed in the middle of harvest time on the farm) my parents told me that my mom was expecting her 13th child. I was happy and excited but at the same time extremely worried since just a few months prior my mom had to have emergency surgery to remove her left ovary due to a twisted cyst. Her last two pregnancies had also been very exhausting and hard for her. This baby came as a surprise to my parents as they were ready to be done with 12. Nonetheless the thought of having a newborn baby to hold again was exciting and I couldn’t wait to love on this new little one.......Sadly 3 days after my parents told me the news my mom was rushed to the emergency room. My little baby brother or sister’s life ended just a month after it began. It was hard for me to comprehend. This was something I never thought I would experience yet now it was all to real. It was a different hurt that I had never dealt with before and I didn’t know how to handle it. I just remember crying uncontrollably, asking God how I was suppose to let go of someone I had never held. How was I suppose to praise God in this situation?

Just a month later, as I was getting ready for bed, my grandma called saying grandpa was having chest pains. On the way to the hospital (via ambulance) he had a major heart attack. All 4 of his valves were blocked and barely functioning. He was rushed into emergency surgery to get 3 of the 5 stints put in that would help his heart to function properly. I sat there in stunned shock that I almost lost my grandpa and that at anytime he could have another attack. How was this happening? Why?! In utter exhaustion I cried out to God that I’d had enough. I couldn’t take it anymore...but Satan wasn’t done testing me yet. Four days after being realeased from the hospital my grandpa got into a car accident. By the grace of God no one was hurt and life continued on. My grandpa made 2 more scary trips to the ER and the fear of losing him never leaves my mind. How was I to praise God in this?

TEARS OF FRUSTRATION
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As all this was going on I was fighting another battle physically. The middle of September I developed a cough that stuck with me until the beginning of November. It got so bad at one point that I was stuck laying on a couch for almost 2 weeks because of the pain in my side. We suspected it was either pneumonia or bronchitis...or both. By the end of October I was feeling almost myself so I went to Virginia and Maryland to visit my best friend and my family for my birthday. I had a great time and made memories I will never forget. In that brief time I could almost imagine my life getting back to normal and not fearing what the next day would hold. I spoke to soon. One week before I was to head home I got sick. Thankfully it was a 24 hour bug and I could enjoy the rest of my vacation...or so I thought....it was not to be. Three days later I got a major ear infection and extreme pain in the whole left side of my face that drove me to tears. I arrived home emotionally and physically drained. This pain lasted for ten days and for weeks after I could only do a few hours work before my eyes would start feeling pressured and cause pain in my head. At this point all I wanted to do was give up. I couldn’t understand why all this was happening to me and my family. Again I cried out to God as tears of frustration and pain ran down my face. “God how will I get through this? When will it stop? How much more will I have to go through?”

TEARS OF JOY
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So how does one praise God in situations like these? Well let me ask you this; How many times have you missed the rainbow because you were complaining about the rain? See it’s easier for us as humans to complain about the bad things that happen than it is for us to focus on the good. Why is that? Maybe it’s because Satan makes the bad things stand out by constantly reminding us of them? Or maybe it’s because it’s easier to complain about something that’s happened in our life that makes it hard to be happy instead of getting up and focusing on all the good we can make out of a bad situation. God doesn’t want our trials to knock us down. He wants them to push us to move foward and trust Him to make something good out of it. Each painful experience we go through will help us to understand and help someone else through it in the future. Our God is a God of love and the pain we feel He feels abundantly more because He takes our pain upon Himself. He cares about every little thing that happens in our life. As tears of pain and sadness roll down our cheeks He wants only to wipe them from our face and turn them from tears of sadness to tears of joy.

So yes I WILL praise God in the rainy times of my life. I will praise Him for His hand of protection over my grandma and grandpa. He knew I needed them in my life at this time. I will praise Him for His overwhelming love over my mom as He welcomed her little one into His waiting arms and sent His comfort and peace to embrace her during this time in her life. I will praise Him for His hand of compassion and love as I went through the pain of being sick and dealing with the emotions of what happened in these last few months. And most of all I will praise Him for the life He has given me; filled with amazing family and friends that encourage and stand by me, for a vision to teach the world with the talents He has blessed me with and the hope that one day I will bring the light to people who live in darkness. Until then I will continue to focus on singing God’s praises in the rain.